Peripheral devices, such as communications devices or analog-to-digital converters (ADCs), and one or more corresponding controlling devices (e.g., microcontrollers) can communicate between each other through commonly accessible memory locations. Direct-memory access (DMA) is a memory access technology in which a peripheral device can directly transfer data to/from a memory location. Typically, this memory location is part of the main system memory, which also contains program code and data. However, allowing DMA to the main system memory may have disadvantages. For example, under DMA, wrong addressing (e.g., memory area overflow or buffer overflow) can pose a potential security threat as it is possible to inject executable code into the main system memory. In addition, under DMA, the main system memory typically stays active in low-power modes, causing power consumption to increase.